


Pills

by Gildedmuse



Category: Firefly
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, Medical Experimentation, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, POV First Person, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 10:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18798757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: You are what you consume.





	Pills

**Pills**

 

Pills. They feed us in pills. Blue pills, red pills, big long pills that go down - down so easy and up, up out through the skin and the eyes and the tongue. Pills by the handful, or by the needle full if the hand doesn't behave and it will behave. If it doesn't they have pills for that. Pills for the hand and the heart and the stomach and the brain. Pills that make you quiet or pills that make you strong and no you can't hide them in your bed or beneath your tongue. They'll find them there, they know where you put them and they'll get them into you one or way or another. Sooner or later you have to eat, and then they'll get you. They'll get pills for breakfast, for lunch, for afternoon tea. Pills to make you smart or pills that make you fast. Into your mouth, count them all up, sure they go down. Don't you want to eat? Don't you want to be better.

 

Ha!

 

Sorry. They don't make pills for a sense of humor. Oh, oh but they will. They already have them for so many things. All sorts of different chemical reactions that can recreate almost any natural or even unnatural occurrence including those commonly thought of as emotions. Pills that make you silent, pills that make you happy, pills that make you sleep. Only it's not... It's not anything like sleep, it's not human. You sleep and it's cold and it's dead.  There are no dreams anymore... Instead it's all them - all their voices and ideas and fears and all of it sounding off in your head and if you aren't there than how do you know it's even you anymore? Once they take all the dreams out of your sleep where do they all go, and where do you wait until you can wake back up?

 

Do you hide or try and escape?

 

Do you sleep or do you die?

 

I've always been this curious, that's not the pills it's just me. Can they take out your head and put it in a pill? A River pill. One tiny little girl, taken before breakfast with an empty stomach and a full glass of water and by noon you'll be herself! No, no, that's more silliness of course. There is no River pill, there is no need for one. The fifty two pills they give you a day, not a single one is River. Who is this girl, anyway? I don't remember any one by that name living here.

 

Don't you want to get better? Pills will make you better, just like the doctor.... Doctor, doctor what does that mean? No, I know what means I can quote most of the dictionary without hesitation but sometimes words turn weird. They have taste. This one tastes bitter and bad on the tip of my tongue just like pills. Everything taste like pills now. Doctor. Doctor. Doc-tor. You have to study for years to become one, have to be real smart, but they say I'm smarter. They give me pills that make me smarter - Simon!

 

Simonsimonsimonsimon! Don't lose that word. Simon! He's a brilliant doctor. Just a doctor? No, there is something about this one he's smart but stupid and sometimes he can treat her like such a baby because he saw her as a baby and he held her and she was so small, so fragile he thought for sure that in the real world she would shatter but he held her so never would fall and the doctors say to take the pills they'll make you better and Simon makes people better he's a brilliant doctor and - No! I'm going backwards, repeating already established data. Start from what we know: Simon. Why is he important? Because he's a doctor, no, there are plenty of doctors here but none like Simon. because he held her. Yes! Because he loved her, but love isn't a quantifiable presense, it can not be submitted for evidence not unless you locked it all up and made it a pill and forced it down the throats of scared young girls who refuse to eat your lies because they taste so bad, like Simon's cooking.

 

That's another joke. You can use it if you want. Turn it into a pill, but I doubt it would do much good.

 

Is it still funny if it's a pill? Is it still love if they force you take the correct dosage every day? I don't think it is, and they all agree. They all want to see you dead, dead, dead and torn apart and choked out and worn like God it hurts get it out get t out no not another pill please no please --

 

Down

down

down

 

drop

 

You don't have long now, maybe five minutes or maybe twenty but how can a person be themselves only twenty minutes a day? No, you're wasting time feeling sorry for yourself - don't worry, they have a pill that will fix you right up and -  No! Think, think about what makes a River pill! All the little oddities and bits they would have to put in. A slice of a smile and a gram of silly bedtime games played with... with a boy with who was such a sucker for that smile... The name, the name, I don't remember the name! The pills, they always make you forget, they take away the girl and they make her a shell, a capsule where they can stick all their smartstrongfastgooduglyhate. Fill her up like a pill and then they'll feed her to others just like she's being fed now and they won't be able to keep her down. Who could ever swallow such a thing? Who could ever love --

 

Not that it matters. They'll be able to manufacture enough for everyone to take their dosage. And they'll be better for it. That's what the pills do, they make people better. That's why we're here. That's why we're trying so hard and taking so many pills. So that we can make people better, make the whole universe a better place. A world full of nothing, full of pills that take pills.

 

It's funny, you see.

  
  



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